"Strategy for International Standardization" in Graduate Course of a University

Yushi KOMACHI, 2006-12-14

Kokushikan University established Graduate Course of Interdisciplinary Intellectual Property Laws [1] and began the education and research activities in its Division of Intellectual Property Laws, in April 2006. The activities include education for international standardization. This paper shows the background and overview of my lectures "Strategy for International Standardization" in the Graduate Course.

The requirements for international standardization are definitely stated in "Proposal for Promotion of Strategic International Standardization" [2] by Japan business federation and in "Intellectual Property Promotion Plan 2005" [3] by Japanese Government. The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology reported a today's status of the education for standardization [4].

Kokushikan University planned in its Graduate Course to develop human resources that can cover the area of law, management and engineering, referring to those statements and reports. The Graduate Course identifies the importance of education and research of international standardization and provides several programs of lectures on standardization.

The handbook of the Graduate Course shows the purpose and abstract of the lecture "Strategy for International Standardization":
Most countries are requested to have their national standards harmonizing with corresponding international standards. In addition they are requested to trade products conforming to the related international standards. Therefore, an international standardization has today been an industrial strategy itself for most countries. Countries and companies can effectively apply their intellectual properties by providing their technologies to international standardization. Responding to those requirements, this lecture provides;
- activities of international standardization organizations (IEC and ISO),
- strategies and guidelines for developing international standards, and
- how to develop national standards conforming to corresponding international standards.
They are based on the experience of the lecturer, who is a chair of Advisory Group on Strategy in IEC/TC100 and a convener/project editor of ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34.

As shown in the fact that ISO has a number of TCs, today's standardization activities cover huge area and fields. Since my standardization activities have been restricted to the areas of information technology (in particular, document processing) and multimedia systems/equipment, it is almost impossible for me to say about general strategy for international standardization.

When planning my lecture, I prepared several topics that can clarify how to develop efficiently international standards, and prepared some topics of case studies based on my standardization experiences.
Those topics include some strategic issues for standardization.
Regarding the areas outside my scope, I arranged for appropriate experts to provide special lectures instead of me.

As listed in table 1 the lecture consists of 15 topics. Each topic takes 90 minutes of presentation. In the second topic, I presented actual discussions in the IEC/TC100 meetings held just before the lecture. In the 9th topic, the actual discussions in the W3C meeting were reported.

Table 1 Lecture program of "Strategy of International Standardization"

Supports and cooperation with standardization activities of Asian countries

13

Drafting national standards conforming to international standards

14

Drafting new work item proposals for ISO and IEC

15

Drafting international standards for ISO and IEC

After those presentations, I recognized the following issues for education of international standardization:

(1) A number of important references for international standardization locate on webs and they are frequently updated. The materials for education of standardization have to include lists of hyperlinks. For more definite specification of those references, a location model of the linking target should be more sophisticated.

(2) Strategies of international standardization bodies (expert, company, government or standardization organization) are different from each other. When discussing the strategies, we should clarify the position of a standardization body.

(3) Strategies of international standardization depend on international economical and political conditions changing day by day. In order to develop an appropriate strategy, therefore, research and study in a graduate course will be essential.

I thank Prof. Naotaka Kato of Kokushikan University for his activities of planning the Graduate Course. Special thanks are due to Dr. T. Kurokawa, Dr. K. Ohno and Ms. Y. Ogura for providing their presentations.